now I'm pining, honey can't you see?

I make no excuses for craving happiness and so I delight in going over little memories, details that come to mind. Just now I clanked around on the clanky Steinway in the freezing dining room for a bit, not really enjoying the sound but enjoying moving my fingers, getting through (Nascar fashion) a few Bach inventions at ripping speed, and then finding a singable key for Tom Waits' Grapefruit Moon. And I recalled the delight on your face when I entered the kitchen and you asked me, with the most surprising and charming impatience, about my piano playing, how do I do it, how's it done, what on earth do I mean by such things as "keys," and I responded in a McGilchristish pseudo-neuroscientific fashion (how do I make music? how the hell do I know?), referring with a shrug to fortuitous harmony between my left & right hemispheres, nice try that flew over not only your head but mine, so I changed tack, beckoned expansively Susan Orlean-style - come with me - and said I can't describe it, easier if I show you. And so (within about 2 seconds) Kitty and Levin sat down together on the narrow bench, and I uttered some nonsense about major & minor keys and chromatics, and moved my fingers over the keys, all the while looking at you, savoring you close next to me, while you beamed and grinned at me, and I beamed and grinned at you, and we were altogether much much too closely supervised by - who was that behind us, anyway? some domestic police, no matter - Kitty & Levin have endured worse, we're good at maintaining the most proprietous public front. It makes me really happy that somehow for a tiny moment I made you happy - and, by the way - you too brought me an instant of intense joy - one star shining...

I'm smiling now as I type this, darling, thinking of you, of that lovely little moment...